Nabil Beydoun

Nabil Beydoun (2 March 1949-) was an Egyptian author, philosopher, and politician who founded the Egyptian Islamist Party in 1992.

Biography
Nabil Beydoun was born on 2 March 1949 in Cairo, Egypt to a family of Sunni Muslim Egyptians. Beydoun was a student of Sayyid Qutb, and he was an avid reader of his Islamist works. Beydoun was involved with the Muslim Brotherhood's youth branches in the early 1960s, and he protested after Qutb's execution by Gamal Abdel Nasser. Beydoun became a believer in an Islamic society ruling Egypt, and he became the leader of the "Young Islamists" movement of Cairo. In 1981 he was arrested along with hundreds of other Islamists in response to the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, and Beydoun was only released in 1985. Beydoun spoke out against the government, and in 1986 he wrote a book called "My Milestones", taking on the title of a Qutb book with a twist; it discussed his views on Islamism. Many agreed with him, including fellow protester Kamal Rauf. The two of them founded the Egyptian Islamist Party in 1992, and they ran for local office. By 2001, they had a 4.1% minority in the upper house of the Egyptian government, and in 2005 they had a 13% minority.

However, Beydoun was the subject of controversy several times. In a 1988 interview by Saudi Arabian journalists, he stated that "There is no place for Jews in Egypt, or in the rest of the world", when asked about how minority groups would be treated under an Islamist government. In 1990, he was again the subject of controversy when he spoke out against Egypt joining the United States as an ally against Ba'athist Iraq in the Gulf War, saying, "the American crusaders are killing Muslims, so it should be our duty to Islam to fight crusaders whenever they intend to kill Allah's people." Beydoun reiterated these views when Saudi countries gave support to America after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and he was investigated as a possible donor to al-Qaeda, specifically the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Gama'a al-Islamiya.